Monday, February 24, 2014

First Joseph Campbell Book on 'Goddesses'

Goddesses:
Mysteries
of the Feminine Divine by Joseph Campbell,
edited by Safron Rossi, New World Library (2014), hardcover, 336 pages.

Although Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) wrote some material on goddesses and
included Goddess mythology in his lectures, this
is Campbell's the first book (published posthumously) devoted specifically to these topics. Campbell’s
Goddess material has been compiled into book form by Safron Rossi, curator of
Collections at Opus Archives and Research Center at the Joseph Campbell Foundation (JCF) , which houses the Campbell archives as well as those of
Marija Gimbutas and other scholars.

One might
ask: What took so long? That is a story in itself. According to JCF’s David
Kudler, “In 1980, when JCF president Robert Walter was working as Joseph
Campbell's editor, the two men drew up a list of books that Campbell felt were
important to publish. At the top of that list was a book on the feminine
divine.” The project went slowly, however, primarily because Walter was not
satisfied with the efforts of two previous editors who attempted the task, the first in 1989 and the
second in 1997. “The third time’s the charm,” Walter says of Safron Rossi’s
successful editorial work in the just-published
volume. (See video interview with Walter at end of this review for more details.)

In her
Foreword to Goddesses, Rossi, a Ph.D. associate core faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute,
explains the influence of Marija Gimbutas on the development of
Campbell’s work on the female divine, and that Goddesses was created to “honor the legacies” of both Gimbutas and
Campbell. Rossi writes: “The exploration and study of goddess mythology has
progressed significantly since Campbell presented these lectures over three
decade ago. It is my hope that this volume holds the counterpoint to the idea that
Campbell was focused solely on the hero and was not sensitive to or did not
find of interest goddesses….”

Indeed
this book, which contains not only the narrative but also many of the pictures
from the slides Campbell used in his lectures, achieves that goal. It is valuable both
for Campbell’s insights and as a historical document, showing us what was known
on the subject nearing the end of the 1980s—some of which remains our best
knowledge to date and some of which has been updated by later information,
especially archeological finds and anthropological work.

Serving as
Campbell’s Introduction to the book is a chapter titled, “On the Great
Goddess,” which draws on a 1980 article by Campbell in Parabola and material from Campbell’s Historical Atlas of World Mythology, Vol. 2. The Introduction begins to explore what Campbell saw as a shift in male and female roles, which he calls
archetypical, and differences between female and male magic; the Goddess in the
“Old Stone Age,”and in the time of “early planters,” including archeological
finds from Catal Huyuk; what Campbell calls “The Golden Age” of the Goddess, her
subsequent “degradation,” and her “return.” These discussions include a variety
of cultures. Campbell’s Introduction ends with this question: “And is it
likely, do you think, after all her years and millennia of changing forms and
conditions, that she is now unable to let her daughters know who they are?”

The next eight chapters go into more detail on these topics, include
many illustrations, and delve into many Goddess mythologies from many different cultures. Chapter titles and some of subjects include: "Myth and Feminine Divine" (Paleolithic Culture; relationship to nature); "Goddess-Mother Creator: Neolithic and Early Bronze Age" (Anatolia and Old Europe); "Indo-European Influx" (spears, languages, burial mounds, suttee, Mycenae); "Sumerian and Egyptian Goddesses" (Mesopotamia, Sumeria, "Semitic Influx," Egypt, Isis and Osiris); "Goddesses and Gods of the Greek Pantheon" (special focus on Artemis, Apollo, Dionysus, Zeus, Ares, Athena); "Iliad and Odyssey: Return to the Goddess"; "Mysteries of Transformation" (comparison of changes in various geographical areas and cultures, "mystery cults," Persephone myth, "Dionysus and the Feminine Divine"); "Amor: The Feminine in European Romance," (Virgin Mary, Authurian legends, Joan of Arc, Marie de Champagne, Tristan and Iseult, Lancelot and Guinevere, Goddess and the Renaissance). In
addition to the usual back matter, Goddesses has an appendix with Campbell’s
Foreword to Gimbutas’s The
Language of the Goddess, Editor Rossi’s bibliography of “Essential
Readings” in Goddess studies (10 books by 9 authors), and a bibliography of
Campbell’s works.

Goddesses is a welcome addition to Goddess scholarship and is likely to appeal particularly to fans of Campbell in general, to Goddess scholars, and to the growing Goddess community worldwide.

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